You’ve undoubtedly heard about Bettie Page, the pin-up model who posed in fetish gear and did bondage scenarios. It was photography entrepreneur and self-titled “Pin-Up King’ Irving Klaw who transformed her into one of the sexiest women of the 20th century. We’ll never know how many people over the generations have enjoyed and even become obsessed with the hundreds (maybe thousands!) of pictures he shot of her from his studio on East 14th Street in Manhattan.
I first caught a glimpse of her ca. 1980 while hanging out with a male high school friend. He asked if he could show me some old, shaky reels that turned him on. Being me, I immediately said yes. Soon we were watching a sexy woman in a bra, garters, and stockings, who jiggled and danced in impossibly high heels. It was strange to me and reminded me of the uncomfortable girdles my mother wore. I wasn’t sure what he found sexy in the scratchy reels, but I didn’t judge either. We never talked about it again.
Klaw Was King of Kink In His Day
It wasn’t until I was well into my BDSM journey that it came together. My old friend didn’t show me anything with bondage by Klaw, but my kinky friends did!
Three decades later, I nominated him for an LHOF (Leather Hall of Fame) award and made the case that Klaw was a pioneer of modern kink for heterosexuals. He tapped into that kinky nature so many of us share. Thousands of men in the 1950s and 60s bought up his prints, and the images he produced continue to tease and tantalize the now-huge audience for fetish and bondage.
Klaw was inducted into LHOF in 2012, and I was tasked with writing a bio and presenting it at CLAW (Cleveland Leather Awareness Weekend). Yes, Klaw was honored by CLAW. Ain’t life grand? His grandson, Rick, accepted the award for him.
Today, I’m sharing my newly edited version for the blog. (The original, full-length version lives in the LHOF archives.) I’ll also share some fun photos.
Irving Klaw Bio
Born November 9, 1910, in Brooklyn, Irving Klaw was the son of a Jewish subway conductor. He and his younger half-sister Paula formed a bond in childhood that carried them through decades of business partnership.
In 1938, Irving opened a used bookstore in Manhattan, with Paula as his assistant. When he noticed a teenage girl in his shop tearing a photo of Clark Gable from a magazine, he had a revelation: if people would steal a photo of a star, they’d pay for one too. He put out a box of movie stills, and the response was immediate. By 1939, he’d left books behind entirely and opened Irving Klaw’s Pin-Up Photos, soon dubbing himself the “Pin-up King.”
Mail-Order Pin-Ups
World War II turned his mail-order photo business into a boom industry, as homesick soldiers ordered pin-ups by the thousands. Klaw built a photo studio and began shooting burlesque stars like Tempest Storm and Lili St. Cyr. Soldiers began requesting bondage and fetish scenarios by mail, and Klaw obliged. He hired models to enact damsel-in-distress scenes. Rick Klaw, his grandson, says Irving received a Congressional Commendation in the 1940s for boosting troop morale.
Around 1947, Klaw began building a dedicated catalog of original fetish photography, converting the third floor of his building into a production studio. He drew on the earlier work of fetish photographers Charles Guyette and John Willie, and BDSM publisher John Coutts, folding their material into his growing catalog. His former novelty company also began publishing Nutrix, a hardcore bondage magazine, unpolished, unglamorous, and by multiple accounts, an important record of 1950s femdom imagery.
Pin Up, Tie Down
The photos and scenarios were billed as pin-ups, but now they included fetish shoes, leather garments, women with whips, spanking, large-scale equipment, and intense bondage. His market couldn’t get enough of his photos. And so, it seemed obvious to me that Klaw had earned his place in kink history. He was the public face of bondage and fetish throughout the 40s and 50s, operating openly.
It was surprising, reaffirming, and fascinating all at once to learn that despite Klaw’s BDSM-style images, neither he nor Bettie were actually kinky in real life. And, while Klaw gave himself the title of “Pin-up King,” he wasn’t always behind the camera. As his empire grew, he hired photographers too. Instead, he was mostly the idea guy and the bank, always coming up with creative new ways to get his customers’ attention and dollars!
The Booming 50s
By the early 1950s, Klaw’s business had exploded, reportedly earning $1.5 million in 1955, which is $12 million today. It was, by his son Arth’s account, a happy period. Irving came home for lunch with his sons daily and was, by all accounts, a devoted, unremarkable family man outside the studio.
This was also the decade Klaw discovered and shaped some of fetish history’s most enduring names. Bettie Page modeled for him from 1952 to 1957, becoming one of the most iconic pin-ups in American history. Illustrators Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew got their start under Klaw, going on to become foundational names in BDSM art and, later, underground comix.
The FBI Crackdown that ruined his life
Klaw’s success drew federal attention. In 1950, an FBI memo to J. Edgar Hoover launched a fourteen-year campaign against him. In 1955, Senator Estes Kefauver’s committee on teenage delinquency targeted Klaw directly, accusing him of contributing to it through his mail-order bondage photos. Called to testify, Klaw pleaded the Fifth on his lawyer’s advice and was held in contempt.
In 1963, Klaw and his brother-in-law Jack Kramer were indicted and convicted of conspiracy to distribute pornography through the mail. The verdict was later overturned on appeal, but the cost, professional and personal, led Klaw to burn his catalog of bondage negatives and retreat into pin-ups and burlesque photography.
The Family Business Continued
Irving Klaw died of a ruptured appendix in 1966. His sister Paula inherited the business, and later revealed she’d secretly saved a portion of the bondage negatives Irving thought destroyed, releasing them for sale years afterward. The Klaw family business survives today as Movie Star News, still run by Paula and Jack’s son, Ira Kramer, on the same block Irving started on in 1938.
Asked what his grandfather would think of his current reputation in kink history, Rick Klaw said: “I think he’d be surprised and wonder what the fuss was about. He was just a guy trying to make a living for his family.”
Irving Klaw probably never imagined that the community he had unwittingly helped shape would reward him with a plaque from the Leather Hall of Fame in 2012, almost six decades later.
All Good Things Come to an End
A few months after Rick Klaw claimed the plaque, Klaw’s entire inventory was sold to a Las Vegas collectibles company for seven figures. The collection contained roughly 3 million images and about 1,500 Bettie Page prints.
2026 Update
In 2026, censorship of Irving Klaw’s photography continues. Nearly all of his bondage, spanking, and whipping images are now too spicy for social media. When I ran a visual blog in the early 2000s, hundreds of his photos were posted on the Internet, including his seemingly endless bondage shoots depicting “damsels in distress.” That was a euphemism for what we’d call hardcore bondage these days. Let’s say there was a lot of distress.
I can’t even share most of the surviving images. The corporatization of the Internet has brought with it a sexless, puritanical culture. Pinterest wiped out about half of the images I once hoped would maintain his kink legacy. Social media now has rules to censor most of his work, even though his specialty was women in sexy outfits, never nude.
What remains of his prints are largely siloed off on art auction sites, on eBay, or curated by fans who valiantly persist in keeping his legacy alive online. Klaw deserves more recognition and a permanent place to showcase all his remaining works. Instead, he’s been marginalized to a point where Bettie Page is far more famous than he is.
